Many scholars hold that the Gospel of Matthew was written after the traumatic events of A.D. 70, when the Jewish War came to its climax and the Jerusalem temple was destroyed.
In a previous post, we argued that Matthew was written sometime between A.D. 55 and 100, but what are we to make of the arguments that it was composed after 70?
Let’s look at the evidence . . .
Presupposing the Destruction of the Temple?
Some have argued that Matthew was written after 70 because it depicts Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple (Matt. 24:1-2).
However, this is not a good argument, for it presupposes that Jesus could not have predicted such an event.
Indeed, one doesn’t even have to suppose that Jesus was a genuine prophet, just that he was a shrewd observer of “the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:3) and could deduce the likely outcome of Jewish anti-Roman passions and the war that they would produce.
The temple had already been destroyed once, and the fear it might happen again was real.
Jesus wasn’t even the only person to predict its destruction in advance. (More here.)
The weakness of the argument in this form is acknowledged by many scholars, and so a refinement has been proposed that argues Matthew’s Gospel contains passages which presuppose that the event has already happened. Raymond Brown, SJ, writes:
For instance, the omission in Matt. 21:13 of the description of the Jerusalem Temple as serving “for all the nations” (Mark 11:17) and the reference in Matt. 22:7 to the king burning the city may reflect the destruction at Jerusalem by the Roman armies in A.D. 70.
These arguments are both quite weak. Note that Brown only says the passages “may reflect” the events of 70.
“For All the Nations”
The first passage reads:
He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you make it a den of robbers” (Matt. 21:13).
It’s true that Mark adds “for all the nations” after “a house of prayer,” but one can’t argue that Matthew deleted this out of animus for Gentiles after the Romans destroyed the temple.
As we’ve seen, Matthew is far from being hostile to Gentiles, and the theme of their evangelization and salvation is a prominent one in his Gospel.
If we want an explanation for why he would delete this phrase, we need look no further than the fact Matthew incorporates 90% of the material in Mark and thus needs to shorten it so that he can fit in all of the additional material he wants to include in his Gospel.
Matthew thus regularly drops words and phrases from what he takes from Mark.
“And Burned Their City”
The second passage Brown cites occurs at the end of the parable of the wedding banquet, where we read this about the king who is snubbed:
The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city (Matt. 22:7).
This also proves nothing. As D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo observe:
The language of Matthew 22:7, including the reference to the burning of the city, is the standard language of both the Old Testament and the Roman world describing punitive military expeditions against rebellious cities. Granted that Jesus foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem (as did many prophets before him), the language he used does not in any detail depend on specific knowledge as to how things actually turned out in A.D. 70. In fact, [John A.T.] Robinson goes so far as to argue that the synoptic prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem, including Matthew 22:7, are so restrained that they must have been written before 70 (An Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed., 153).
The last argument is that the prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem are so general and in keeping with ordinary Roman practice that they don’t betray a knowledge of the details of what happened in 70, and so they were written before that event. Robinson was a liberal English scholar, and liberal German scholar Adolf von Harnack concurred, stating:
Chap. 22:7 and many other passages are rather in favor of composition before the catastrophe (The Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels, 134, n. 2).
Fundamentally, if Jesus could foresee—supernaturally or otherwise—the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple, he could similarly foresee the burning of the city.
The Church
Matthew’s Gospel is unique in that it refers to his “church.” In Matthew 16:18, he says “I will build my church,” and in 18:17 he says “tell it to the church.”
It is argued that this reflects a developed understanding of the Church, but this hardly requires a date after A.D. 70.
St. Paul uses the Greek word for church—ekklesia—61 times in his epistles, all of which were written before A.D. 70.
St. Luke uses it a further 23 times in Acts, which was also written before A.D. 70 (specifically, in A.D. 60, as we discussed before).
The word “church” for the community of Jesus’ followers thus was well established long before the events of 70.
Separation from the Synagogue?
Sometimes it is argued that Matthew displays knowledge of the final separation of church and synagogue in passages like these:
Beware of men; for they will deliver you up to councils, and flog you in their synagogues (Matt. 10:17).
Therefore, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town (Matt. 23:34).
The final separation of church and synagogue is then argued to have taken place around A.D. 85, when the Birkath ha-Minim (Hebrew, “blessing concerning the heretics”) is said to have been introduced into Jewish prayer and thus prevented Jewish Christians from participation in Jewish worship, since it was directed against them.
However, there are multiple problems with this argument.
First, the history and interpretation of the Birkath ha-Minim is highly debatable, making it too uncertain to use as a marker for dating.
Second, the alleged introduction of it around 85—if that even is when it was introduced—is a dividing line of convenience. The separation of church and synagogue was a lengthy process that cannot be assigned to a single date.
Third, the verses in question do not speak of Jewish Christians being excluded from the synagogue by the introduction of a prayer. They speak of them being beaten in synagogues.
Fourth, the verses actually speak of a time before the separation was complete. They envision a time when Jewish Christians were still attending the synagogue and thus could be subject to beatings there.
Fifth, the persecution of Christians attending synagogues, including beatings, is precisely what we see in the book of Acts (9:2, 20-23, 13:43-50, 14:1-6, 17:1-5, 10-13, 18:17, 22:19, 26:11), and the events it records took place between A.D. 33 and 60.
Sixth, this objection presupposes that Jesus could not have—supernaturally or otherwise—foreseen the consequences of the spread of the Christian message for his followers (despite the fact he foresaw his own death and undertook actions he knew would provoke the Jewish authorities).
“To This Day”
Matthew 27:8 refers to the fact that the field where Judas died has been called the field of blood “to this day,” and Matthew 28:15 reports that the idea the disciples stole Jesus’ body has been circulating among non-Christian Jews “to this day.”
Concerning such passages, Raymond Brown argues:
Two passages (27:8; 28:15) describe items in the Matthean passion narrative that are remembered “to this day,” using an OT phrase to explain place names from long ago (Gen. 26:33; 2 Sam. 6:8). Such a description would be very inappropriate if Matt was written only two or three decades after A.D. 30/33 (An Introduction to the New Testament, 216).
This is very weak. The phrase “to this day” may be used in the Old Testament to refer to things that started in the distant past, but this is far from a required condition.
Despite Brown’s reference to “two or three decades,” in context he is using this as an argument against Matthew having a pre-A.D. 70 date. The difference between A.D. 30 and 70 is four decades, and Brown himself places Matthew’s composition in “80-90, give or take a decade” (p. 172).
So . . . “two or three decades” would be a “very inappropriate” period to warrant the use of the phrase “to this day” but four or five would make it appropriate?
That’s hardly plausible. All that the phrase indicates is that some period of time which the author deems significant has passed, and a distance of 30 years—quite long in the lifetime of an ancient person—would be quite sufficient.
Conclusion
We haven’t found any good arguments for Matthew being written after A.D. 70.
Are there good arguments for it being written before 70?
That’s what we’ll turn to next . . .
Jimmy,
how do you explain the last Gospel written (Muratorian fragment, ~160 A.D., notes John wrote the last Gospel?
From archaeology evidence John’s Gospel was written prior to 70 A.D.
Jimmy, here are some of my thoughts on Mark. The 1st is that we might meet him sooner, maybe Mk 14:51-52? That being said I think that the traditional Matt., Mk., Like & John seem to fit the picture better then Mark 1st theory.
I guess the initial point would be, what evidence do we have that Mark is not 1st ? My guess would be the Muratorian Fragment, written about 150-160 A.D. Unfortunately part is missing, but where it begins, it appears to be describing the 2nd author of the Gospels. It sounds like the author is describing Mark, listening to Peter’s recollections of Jesus, in Rome, as noted by Eusebius [15]. This would have been after Peter escaped Herod, Act 15, about the year 43-44 A.D. So the date of Peter preaching in Rome, and Mark being with him, after leaving Paul and Barnabus, would fit in the mid to late 50’s for Mark’s Gospel, written in a “rougher” Greek. Maybe Greek translated from a Semitic Hebrew or Aramaic? However from the description of Mark, his family could be described as “well off”, and he would have had a good education, including writing.
So what was Matthew doing all this time? Looking back at Matthew’s profession, tax collector, it would indicate he would have to be good at keeping records, and recording them rather rapidly, as caravans traders etc. were passing through. It also would be likely that Matthew would have a working knowledge of ‘tachygrphos‘, or a form of working shorthand, common in those days by experienced writers or scribes. Also the method used by students to capture the words and thoughts of their teachers. Like those who captured the speeches of Cicero & Pericles. Memory backed up by hard copy documentation. Hence it would not be far fetched for Matthew to be the candidate to record much of what Jesus said and done as he traveled with him.
According to Eusebius, Matthew [39], produced a Hebrew version of the ‘sayings’ of Jesus. Also it seems “Matthew published a written gospel for the Hebrews in their own tongue, while Peter & Paul were preaching in Rome (early 60’s?)”, Eusebius [8]. In addition he notes that Pantaenus the philosopher, visiting the “East’ found a Semitic copy of Matthew’s Gospel, [Eusebius 9]. Somewhere I recall, that a copy was in the Great Christian Library of Caesarea, and noted by St. Jerome, or Eusebius.
Biblical an Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Fr. J. Carmignac, in his book “Birth of the Synoptics”, notes that all the Synoptic Gospels reveal significant Semitic (Hebrew) underpinnings, prior to their being tanslated into Greek, that we know of today.